Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to a system and method corresponding to a receiver in a serial digital communications system, and more particularly to an eye pattern of a serial data signal being received.
The quality of a received serial data signal may be characterized by generating an eye pattern from the serial data signal. An eye pattern is a measure of the serial data signal over a time interval (−T, T), where T is the bit-period of the signal, and is the superposition of the individual segments of the serial data signal.
For example, an eye pattern may be formed by feeding the received serial data signal into an oscilloscope in infinite persistence mode and continuously triggering the oscilloscope by the bit clock of the signal. Other test equipment designed especially for testing serial data signals may also be used to generate an eye pattern.
The eye pattern characterizes the quality of the received signal by showing rise and fall transitions, bit pattern distortions caused by the transmission and receive channels, the boundary within which no waveforms exist for any code pattern, inter-symbol interference (ISI), and jitter.
Having to generate and monitor an eye pattern externally to a serial digital communications system using external test equipment is cumbersome, time consuming, and does not allow for real-time, operational monitoring of signal quality.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.